An editorial on iPad sales and competition

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

The iPad is standard issue to the supervisors/foremen of one of the private contractors working at LAX. It contains all the plans, blueprints, specifications, etc. No need to carry tons of paperwork for reference. Really useful. Sure, you could carry all the plans on a laptop, but those aren't as easy to use when you're out on the job site.

I remember that when I started to look for a reader last year there were commercials that were saying that eink is best for this. As a plus they talked about how great it is in the light.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

Probably not. It seems like the hardware these tablet makers have to use to match or beat Apple on price is often a step below the hardware Apple is using.

The processor is the same, lenovo has twice the memory, ipad2 has the better graphics card, lenovo has the bigger display with higher resolution, but the form factor is a matter of preference, lenovo has much better cameras, and for the same price you get a bigger HDD.
So: iPad +1, Lenovo K1 +4 on hardware.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

iPad +1, Lenovo K1 +4 on hardware.

This is how the cheapo tablet and pc makers think.

And yet in this down market Apple is one the top 2 or 3 most successful businesses in the world.

From the review:

The K1′s hardware is chunky and cheap-feeling, its screen is washed out,

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

This is how the cheapo tablet and pc makers think.

Actually it just makes the ipad2 overpriced, because the components are cheaper.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Actually it just makes the ipad2 overpriced, because the components are cheaper.

Is only overpriced if you can't sell it and your competitors beat you out... hmm, did Apple sell many of these iPad things...

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Actually it just makes the ipad2 overpriced

They are selling every one that they can make -- mainstream consumers love the price point.

[OtterBooks]

The K1′s hardware is chunky and cheap-feeling, its screen is washed out,

Lenovo is rather well known for poor displays; not sure I would buy a tablet from them. I like my Thinkpad, though. In fact I wouldn't buy anything from Lenovo that didn't have a physical keyboard (an area in which they are second to none).

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

lenovo has the bigger display

9.7" at 4:3 is larger than 10.1" at 16:10.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Graham

Here's another way to look at it. Tablets are big news at the moment, and lots of people are buying their first one. Within both the iPad and Android tablet communities you'll have a proportion of customers who find that the tablet is perfect for their needs, and another set who find that it has limitations for what they need to do. You only need to scan the posts here on MobileRead to see that there are plenty of the latter.

Ah, therein lies the difference. You see the current crop of the tablets as a very well defined (and bound) concept, a device best suited to "consume", rather than create the content, to borrow the phrase coined in quite a few net sources. Something bound by the (current) scope and limits imposed by Apple on iPad's.

I, on the other hand, believe that what we are seeing both from Apple, and from Android is but a start of that evolution. Apple is to defend against the onslaught of competition, and both sides will bring the heavy guns to the battle. The stakes are high, this, IMHO, is the start of war for "PC inheritance".

At the peak of their might, Microsoft did not only control the operating system and important apps, they controlled the concept of the PC. It was Microsoft that defined how much memory to buy on your new PC, what is the appropriate disk size, the machine was, pretty much, shaped by declarations from Redmond.

Apple with iPad success now controls the concept of the tablet, and everybody else is playing catch up. I have no doubt that Android crowd will turn to asymmetric strategies, to offer more hardware and features (see Asus Eee "transformer", it can turn itself into netbook), and attack the concept, rather than trying to create "a better iPad than iPad, mythical "iPad killer".

I don't expect swing back to netbook not based on the current functionality and scope, but based on expectations wrt the future development.

Originally Posted by Graham

Windows 8 hybrid netbook/tablets could well take off.

That would be a big, big surprise. Microsoft strength lies not in the technical prowess of their platform, but in apps runing on wintel machine. Apple's claim that "there is an app for that" is a joke compared to the wealth of apps existing for Windows PC.

But Intel can not even hope to bring x86 competitor to the mobile space, and that's the major problem for MS. Yes, I am very well aware that Microsoft is targeting ARM for 8, but that was tried before, and never produced the success equivalent to the Wintel hegemony. Nobody cares about Windows, it's the apps that matter. And Microsoft somehow has a special problem with developers. I wonder why?

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by Ankh

attack the concept, rather than trying to create "a better iPad than iPad, mythical "iPad killer".

What a mistake.

Great post.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Apple with iPad success now controls the concept of the tablet, and everybody else is playing catch up.

I agree with this-the first generation of competitors tried to play Apple's game, "just like the iPad but thinner! with Flash! SD Card! HD screen!".

I am pretty sure Amazon, for one, won't play that game (i.e., they won't try to be the thinnest, or brag about features). Amazon will play to their strengths - a successful digital ecosystem, a loyal userbase core (Kindle and Prime), and millions of credit cards already on file

[petermillard]

Good piece by Patrick Rhone here

"Stop trying to make iPads. Make markets...

Just like the iPad created a whole option, and thus, new market (the one you keep calling the “tablet market”), the only way to compete is not to get into that market but to create a whole new one. One that will suck the life out of the iPad market. Something so disruptive, so mind blowing, so magical that, like the iPad, people will form lines around the block for months to get it..."

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

9.7" at 4:3 is larger than 10.1" at 16:10.

I get 45.1632 square inches for 9.7" at 4:3, and 45.8472 square inches for 10.1" at 16:10. I thought that the difference would be bigger, but the 10.1" screen is still bigger.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by kjk

I agree with this-the first generation of competitors tried to play Apple's game, "just like the iPad but thinner! with Flash! SD Card! HD screen!".

As far as I am concerned, it would be a mistake to judge the impact of this wave of Android tablets by the marketing messages used to sell them. Don't get me wrong, these thinly veiled lies were and still are a mistake. The Android (world) is still not ready to take on iPad. Yet.

It is a part of net folklore that iPad was labeled as a "big screen iTouch"? Most of the owners agree that this was "a good thing"(tm). What Apple has achieved is maximization of their major strength, the fat inventory of iPhone/iTouch apps. The transition (of software) to bigger screen is almost finished, and Apple got where it wanted to be in very short time. If there is any weakness in their position, it is that very big number of apps that already exists, strange as it might sound. Why? Because Apple's hands are tied, the rate of hardware changes now and in the future has to be gradual not to hurt that apps inventory. They can not afford to redesign iPad (or introduce a new platform) if that means loosing large number of apps.

If you dig into the current crop of Android tablets, one thing is certain, these are not "big screen Android smartphones". It boils down to the component at the hart of the platform: TI's OMAP3 family of SoC's that almost defines the Android phone, is completely different beast compared to Tegra2, the chip that dominates the Android tablet. Which is, as always, both blessing and the curse. Tegra2 packs some serious processing power, same as iPad. Unlike iPad, the device right now has a lead over Apple in the graphics subsystem. These are CUDA cores, and that technology works well for games. Not board games, fast action paced, well rendered environments. Android tablet is already shaping up to be a completely different beast when compared to iPad. Which is a blessing. What is the curse? The sharp discontinuity between Android phone world, and Android tablet. Software has to catch up not only on the bigger screen, the apps, OS, everything has to catch up on graphics eyecandy. So, it is very normal that early Andoid tablet adopters are techies. While useful devices, these Andoid tablets are still expensive to be seen as a commercial challenge to iPad, they are, in essence, a glorified development platform that is (already) useful for everyday tasks.

I am not surprised to see them failing to challenge iPad position. Those devices are paving the road for the future development, and from everything that I see, the answer will be highly asymmetric. Google, Nvidia, Asus, Acer and other names from the Android world have a staying power, sources of income that they can use to finance this war. And I don't expect them to give up like HP did.

Originally Posted by kjk

I am pretty sure Amazon, for one, won't play that game (i.e., they won't try to be the thinnest, or brag about features). Amazon will play to their strengths - a successful digital ecosystem, a loyal userbase core (Kindle and Prime), and millions of credit cards already on file

I have no doubt that Amazon will make money. No doubt at all. But I do believe that Amazon will play precisely the Apple game, and play it well. Content, hardware used to lock in. Android is on the opposite end of the spectrum by nature. The OS (and integration) is open sourced. Forget Stallman's blabbering on very leftist view of the software and world in general, the open sourced platform is a juggernaut when it comes to its ability to minimize cost of maintenance. Users are more likely to report bugs, quite a few of them will take matters in their hands, dig into the code and supply a fix.

I am fairly certain that ChromeOS has already met his premature demise, and that Android has every chance of defining "a generic computing platform" of tomorrow.

[stonetools]

REally great post, Ankh. A couple of comments:

It is a part of net folklore that iPad was labeled as a "big screen iTouch"? Most of the owners agree that this was "a good thing"(tm). What Apple has achieved is maximization of their major strength, the fat inventory of iPhone/iTouch apps. The transition (of software) to bigger screen is almost finished, and Apple got where it wanted to be in very short time. If there is any weakness in their position, it is that very big number of apps that already exists, strange as it might sound. Why? Because Apple's hands are tied, the rate of hardware changes now and in the future has to be gradual not to hurt that apps inventory. They can not afford to redesign iPad (or introduce a new platform) if that means loosing large number of apps.

I see Apple extending the Ios platform a couple ways. The next step up for the Ipad will probably be " Ipad HD" - The Ipad with a Retina display for $999. That won't extend things very far, though.
I think the next big move for Apple - AppleTV sets, which will be TV, apps, and video game console rolled into one. They can certainly run withthat for a while. The current Apple TV will be built into these sets. ( You don't believe Jobs REALLY thought of Apple TV as a hobby, do you? .)

I am not surprised to see them failing to challenge iPad position. Those devices are paving the road for the future development, and from everything that I see, the answer will be highly asymmetric. Google, Nvidia, Asus, Acer and other names from the Android world have a staying power, sources of income that they can use to finance this war. And I don't expect them to give up like HP did.

WE'll see . At this point, it really does look to me that the iPad will dominate the tablet market, the way the iPod dominates the MP3 player market. They'll have 60-70% with a bunch of also-rans fighting over the rest.

have no doubt that Amazon will make money. No doubt at all. But I do believe that Amazon will play precisely the Apple game, and play it well. Content, hardware used to lock in. Android is on the opposite end of the spectrum by nature. The OS (and integration) is open sourced. Forget Stallman's blabbering on very leftist view of the software and world in general, the open sourced platform is a juggernaut when it comes to its ability to minimize cost of maintenance. Users are more likely to report bugs, quite a few of them will take matters in their hands, dig into the code and supply a fix.

I am fairly certain that ChromeOS has already met his premature demise, and that Android has every chance of defining "a generic computing platform" of tomorrow.

Agree on Amazon. Willing to give Chrome more time before I pronounce it dead. Dunno about the rest